Filming in Wisconsin: What the New Incentives Mean for You

Welcome back to On Production, a podcast brought to you by Wrapbook. Today we're joined by two industry leaders who helped spark a major shift in Wisconsin's production landscape. First is Nathan Deming. He is a filmmaker born and raised in the Badger State who splits his time between Los Angeles and Wisconsin after building his career in the UK and LA. He's continued developing ambitious

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place-driven projects while championing efforts to grow Wisconsin as a thriving filmmaking hub. And alongside him here is Suzanne Jurva, a veteran production executive who worked at major studios like DreamWorks and now advocates for the regional creative economy, particularly through the formation of a state film office and production incentives. Together, they were instrumental

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voices in the passage of a new film incentive legislation in Wisconsin, which is working through coalitions and legislation and production strategy to reshape how productions are planned, budgeted, and executed in the region. Today, we'll dig into what it takes to make incentives meaningful on the ground, how production workflows shift in a newly competitive state market.

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and what this could mean for studios, producers, and crews looking to work in Wisconsin or replicate the model elsewhere. We're thrilled to have Nathan and Suzanne with us today. Let's get into it. Welcome.

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Nathan Deming (01:31.755)

Thanks for having us.

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Suzanne Jurva (01:33.212)

Yeah, thank you.

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Cameron Woodward (01:34.542)

Nathan, starting with you, you came back to Wisconsin to make films. How did that experience on the ground shape your view of the state's potential as a production hub?

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Nathan Deming (01:45.558)

Yeah. I'll say real quick, that was a very friendly intro you gave us, but it was also a lot of other people who put a lot of hard work into making this pass, not just in our coalition, Action Wisconsin, but several legislators on both sides of the aisle, including Governor Tony Evers and Representative Dave Armstrong and Senator Julian Bradley, Republicans. So Democrats and Republicans both work together to get this done, which is exciting.

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But yeah, no, so I've been in LA for about 10 or 11 years, still making projects back in Wisconsin. You know, for me personally, that's probably always going to be a major part of my work. I love my home state, I want to film here. And each time it's been different, but since starting kind of working more on the efforts to pass the incentives, it just got better and better because the whole process was an opportunity for

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filmmakers around the state to get to know each other, which is really fun. I guess part of my story and what motivated me was just that I graduated from the London Film School about 11 years ago, came back to Wisconsin, and I had such an interesting model at that school where so many filmmakers were from, you know, from all over the world. I worked with some of my classmates that are doing amazingly, Carlos Simone, Simone Mesa-Soto, you know, those filmmakers. And there was a model where

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you could go back to where you're from and really be like kind of an ambassador or kind of represent where you're from. And I came back to Wisconsin and there was no infrastructure. There was a ghost of a film office website up. Like the URL was still active, but it had been defunct for like eight years or something crazy like that. So yeah, as I was like emailing it, be like, I'm a filmmaker. And then no response.

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Nathan Deming (03:35.608)

So right away it clicked in me the importance of having some kind of infrastructure there because there were people here. It just was very difficult to find them without the groundwork that hopefully we're laying right now.

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Cameron Woodward (03:47.82)

That's awesome. I do think also you're getting at something. I had the great opportunity of chatting with the film office in...

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in Texas, really in the Dallas area where, you know, like Taylor Sheridan has brought billions of dollars of production spend by telling stories you to his region. And I think to your point, Nathan, like there is a model in that in Tyler Perry and Georgia and all of these other filmmakers. Like there are universal stories everywhere. And so for filmmakers and auteurs to really zone in on a place and and build something there is is viable and interesting as well. For Suzanne, I'm curious, your career is really interesting.

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Cameron Woodward (04:27.28)

through major studio work into regional advocacy. How did your time at DreamWorks inform your perspective on what Wisconsin needed to unlock in order to compete?

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Suzanne Jurva (04:40.192)

So before I was at DreamWorks, I was a filmmaker. And DreamWorks hires only, it's a filmmaker first model. So all of us were filmmakers first, which I think is still rare in the studio world. And so I am not from Wisconsin originally, but a midwesterner. And then I'm looking around and all of us were midwesterners sitting there in these executive suites or in the filmmaking world that I knew. We're like,

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Suzanne Jurva (05:09.766)

why is everybody here when we could be back there? So that was always kind of sat with me. Like everybody I was working with was from the Midwest and we have great work ethics, first of all, and it does transfer into filmmaking. So when I moved back here, which I didn't know I was ever gonna do, I worked in DreamWorks and independently, I actually also work in tech and I co-founded a company with Nokia.

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And we were the first company that brought studio content to the mobile phone. And then I did that and I was like, am not interested anymore in the world of mobile commerce. I'm a storyteller. So I got back into it again to do independent film. And I ended up here. I was in Atlanta for years and then ended up here. And I just immediately started to make

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contact with super talented people who I wanted to work with. Also the thing here is there's a great film education base here. We have great universities. University of Wisconsin Milwaukee is one of the top film schools and it's not a private film school. It's a public film school. So we get those voices of people who can't afford to go to the major film universities because of cost.

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You can get educated here and you're bringing that voice, which I think is very important to open this up for everybody. And what Nathan does so great too is about the place setting here of film. know, we're here to tell the stories of the Midwest. We can tell any story. Nathan and I are just talking about this. You can shoot anything here in Wisconsin. Lake Michigan looks like the ocean, so to speak. And you can go from farm

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to urban settings in 15 minutes. So we have all the stuff here and so I just naturally fell into being an advocate because working at a studio level, you know the process, you go to the film office to get your crew, wait, there's really not a film office here. So people would bring crew in here and not even understand that everybody is here. You can make anything you want here with the crew and with the equipment.

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Suzanne Jurva (07:36.955)

Do we need to grow it? Yes, but that's what will happen with incentives in the film office too.

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Cameron Woodward (07:42.658)

That's great. this question is for both of you, but Nathan, I'll start with you. What were the key pain points the team or the coalition really identified in Wisconsin's production ecosystem before the legislation? Was it locations, crew base, incentives, infrastructure, all of the above?

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Nathan Deming (08:01.622)

Yeah, that's a great question. Kind of like touching on what Suzanne was just bringing up. And you probably know this Cameron with Wrapbook, but up until this legislation passed in July, Wisconsin was one of 13 states without any film incentives. And we were one of three without a film office. like, you know, those were the first and immediate pain points because I was thinking about this question, like we have great locations. We have we have talent here. We have crew here. We have gear here. There's several cinema gear rental houses across the state. We have

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Aria Lexus you can rent. There's stuff here to make production happen, but then most of it goes down to Chicago for work. Most of the crew is flying out to Missouri. I started this film club in Eau Claire to kind of correspond with the Action Wisconsin initiative and also just to meet people up in the northern part of the state. And I was amazed how many people work regularly for the Discovery Channel or just like in the industry.

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But they just worked two weeks on and they drive down to North Carolina and then they come back and you know, it's just like there is all this. There's people here. Really, the problem is no tax incentives, no film office. So the work's not coming. And we got to with about a dozen other filmmakers. We got to testify before the state several times this spring. And the one story we all had in common was we had a story of a production.

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that wanted to film here and was like, Wisconsin might be really interesting and Milwaukee might be interesting, Eau Claire or the Northwoods. And then, do you guys have film incentives? No, and then hung up, never. Like that story was told repeatedly over and over over again. I think that's just the first pain point. Everything else, I think, as we've seen with other states, is like, you know, this can really be what you make of it once you get the ball rolling.

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Suzanne Jurva (09:51.202)

Yeah, I totally agree with that too. It's always been that way with like, we'd love to come here and shoot. We got statements from Ethan Hawke who wants to come here and shoot. David Kep is coming out this week, I guess his statement for how he's excited. He's from Wisconsin. Scott Frank who directed and wrote The Queen's Gambit. He's like, I would love to shoot in someplace new. I'm tired of going to the same old places to shoot.

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go, let's go Wisconsin, it would be fun to shoot there. It starts with film tax incentives with the studios, you just have to have them.

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Cameron Woodward (10:29.612)

So in the advocacy work, how did you all balance the sort of big production attraction narrative with the everyday realities of regional production, commercials, branded content, independent filmmakers?

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Suzanne Jurva (10:44.228)

So what, you know, our tax incentives are at $5 million, which is not going to attract a 26 episode series to begin with. But we are here to start with the indie producers, indie productions. We have so many great indie films here. Nobody is really capturing the indie market that well, I think. Also then,

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we can handle the bigger productions and bring them in when we have, you know, to fill out the rest of the incentive bucket. And with that, you know, because people work, you know, I work indie, big commercial, we'll go on a set, the episodic series, documentary, everything. So that's the way that it is. People bounce between genres, between...

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buckets, production buckets. So that's how it can easily work here too.

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Nathan Deming (11:47.759)

Yeah, I don't know if we said it yet, if you're going to say it, Cameron, but the nitty gritty of our tax incentive, it's a 30 % production incentive and a transferable tax credits. And with the production project cap of, you can jump in, Suzanne, I'm off, per project, per project, $1 million. You're eligible if it's over 30 minutes, $100,000 minimum spend. If it's under 30 minutes, $50,000 spend.

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Nathan Deming (12:15.99)

So that's roughly competitive with the states around us. Illinois and Minnesota have these programs and yes, $5 million is a little small, but it's, you know, the start of the program and we need to like grow it in kind.

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Cameron Woodward (12:28.62)

When does the program window open to apply before things start to pop? January 1st. Okay, great.

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Nathan Deming (12:33.09)

January 1st.

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Suzanne Jurva (12:35.906)

Anyway, first 2026 and we have out there now with maybe you could push this out here to the job description for the film director. So we are looking for a film director to head this office now and we are hoping to get it's a great job and a great opportunity. So we're hoping to get a lot of applications for that.

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Cameron Woodward (12:57.088)

I love it. So here's a question that I don't always get to ask in these conversations because it is sometimes with somebody who's just working in the office or like actually liaisoning with filmmakers. But for you, Nathan, as a filmmaker, with these new incentives and film office coming online, how are you thinking about or planning your next project differently in terms of budgeting, hiring, locations and schedule?

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Nathan Deming (13:20.04)

It's definitely changing like all of my thinking because I've been living this dual life for a while in Los Angeles as well. And as we know, Los Angeles is going through kind of all these massive confusing changes right now. And as a filmmaker, you know, I want to work, I to make my projects happen. So this is already really exciting for me. And I'm just already recalibrating in my head. Yeah, maybe I mean, I've wanted to do one there, one here, one there, one here, but now I'm

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well, maybe I just keep going where the work is. Because Wisconsin's a fantastic place to shoot past the incentives, right? There's this amazing collaborative spirit. Everything I've ever shot here has somebody last minute being like, oh, you're making a film. We'll make you a pie. just like that small town enthusiasm. People aren't jaded. I've lived in LA, and I actually had a day job for a bit.

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one those horrible day jobs where I was shutting down streets for TV shows that were filming, right? So I was just hated and I got all the brunt of the community anger. And I get it, you know? When your street's always being shut down for CSI over and over again, that's annoying. We're not there yet with Wisconsin and there's enthusiasm. People chip in and I actually just shot my next feature last month and I'm in post now and...

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So that's not eligible for the tax incentives yet, right? But that came about very quickly actually because of my work in Action Wisconsin and just this amazing quick kind of integration into the whole state and meeting so many people. I was able to kind of dust off this old project that I'd wanted to do for a bit. And then I was like, well, now I know, you know, so many people have all these resources. So for me already, it's been extremely exciting, even though I'm not going to get that 30 % on this project, but...

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It's definitely making my mind go, I think Wisconsin is a really strong place to have a foundation going forward. And that's a question I think me and lot of independent filmmakers are probably asking, looking at the future of film right now, because it really just seems like it's spreading out, right? Like all the work is, you can already plan a production anywhere. And everyone from strappy indie filmmakers to large studios are proving that every day, right? They're just going to go.

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Nathan Deming (15:39.119)

wherever they can make it happen and they can just coordinate it in ways that were impossible 20, 30 years ago. And then you can self-distribute if you want to, you know, that's a whole separate conversation and deal. But I think it's very interesting the possible new ecosystems as I like to call it, like arising. And I guess in my world, we've sometimes talked about it's like movies are a little bit like bands now, you can kind of like.

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Find a place to get your footing and go from there.

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Cameron Woodward (16:10.87)

That's absolutely right. I was just having a great discussion with the distribution company last week and you know, a lot of their work is really around marketing the films on their slate to the micro communities that are interested in narratives that are being produced. there's really, really exciting things happening there. know, Suzanne, you were just mentioning the office is looking for a director to lead it, which is great, which leads me to my next question for you in particular, which was, know, once the incentives are in place,

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Cameron Woodward (16:40.704)

accepting admissions in January. What production systems or workflows are most important to you in the community to ensure that these incentives actually deliver value for crews and studios?

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Suzanne Jurva (16:54.42)

That is the most important, that productions, producers, studios, production companies see that it's easy to work here in Wisconsin and to use the film office and to use the film tax incentives. I mean, I'm not gonna say this by outing anybody, but some of the states are super slow, really slow in getting your money back. They're clogged up for some reason or another.

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My hope is, and I think everybody's hope is, that we put in somebody into the film office and that the Department of Tourism and Action Wisconsin, which is a coalition, we are going to stay together to help the new film director, to help the Department of Tourism, and to help the film office to get up and running and use our assets there too. So I think having a fresh start is a good thing for us.

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because production has changed so much since COVID and then since the strikes. Film offices have changed, the incentives have been slower, it feels like to me, to getting things back. So we can get this right and start with where we are now and start with indie and micro budgets. But we have this flexibility and we will have the people so we can bring in a studio production too, at the level that the studio will come here now.

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So I think it's a really good opportunity for us and it will be, we are gonna make it as easy as possible for everybody to see how friendly and easy it is to shoot in Wisconsin.

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Cameron Woodward (18:29.582)

I love it. This question is for both of you, which is, what role do you see local crew development, post facilities and service companies playing and making Wisconsin more than just a filming location, but really a complete production ecosystem to play nicely with these incentives?

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Suzanne Jurva (18:47.241)

Yeah, so the good news is we have educated and trained a bunch of filmmakers who had to leave and many of them have indicated they want to come back here to shoot. And there's also another provision in Act 15, which is the bill write up with everything that passes that budget for property. And so this is another good opportunity. Property means not just buying a camera or a laptop for your film, but

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we need to build out more studios, post-house, equipment, rental places, and this bill will give that opportunity for that growth. And I think that's different than what happened in a lot of other states. That was a surprise and a very great surprise. So with that, we can grow from the bottom up again, grow our crews, have people come back here who know they wanna shoot here or maybe just move back here. So, you know, it'll be...

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It's economic development for this area and for filmmakers too.

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Cameron Woodward (19:49.455)

That's obviously the incentive for the state, for the workers in the state, for developing an economy in the film economy in the state, of course. But from Nathan, from your point of view with the production hat on, what are the advantages and the constraints of shooting in a state like Wisconsin versus LA or another established hub? How does that inform your decisions on crew or equipment schedule?

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Nathan Deming (20:16.62)

Yeah, well, I think it does apply to like your last question too, which is like, we're, we're, have infrastructure here, but we're also at the beginning of growing that. So that's the first question. Like I'm, I'm based in Eau Claire when I'm in Wisconsin, Eau Claire currently doesn't have a rental house currently. There is cinema gear here. There's a lot of like local owners. So like a last film I shot, I was able to actually get a lot of like legit gear, like within the state.

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Obviously, if there's more production, there's going to be more rental houses, more like easy to access things like that. And just easier crew databases. Suzanne and I were just talking about the fact that there's not a really easy to access crew database for the entire state yet, which the film office would offer. So basically right now, if I'm crewing up, have to.

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go on Facebook, right, to call everybody I know around the state or whatever. And hopefully that'll get easier. But we have good stuff here. mean, there's Backyard Dreams in Racine that is just outside of Chicago. They're a virtual studio. They want to expand it at sound stages. We have this infrastructure here. have also, mean, part of this, we were in collaboration or talks with

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filmmakers in Chicago who also said, know, we have like, sounds silly to say we have too much work here. Like there's work that can easily flow over here and you guys take over, which would also be exciting. I, yeah, I think there's also like, there's just the energy here now. Like I said, I just started this film club to go along with the incentive, like push. And then the...

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Incentives passed and there's kind of this light in everybody's eyes now here. They're really excited There's more people come to the meetings who talk about I'm kind of planning a short film now or something like that And yes, that's not gonna apply for the incentives, but it's just kick-starting that something I think and film unfortunately like unlike other arts like Eau has big music scene If you know Bony Bear, Bony Bear is from Eau Claire It's got some great writers here too that are New York Times bestsellers but film is naturally gonna be behind those right because it's just

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Nathan Deming (22:25.812)

requires that kind of infrastructure in investing basically.

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Cameron Woodward (22:31.0)

Suzanne, I'm really curious, what metrics or indicators will you be watching to know that the incentives are working?

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Suzanne Jurva (22:38.405)

Well, the creative community is an economic development community. And we know that for 30 years now, creative community brings in other communities too. So the metrics will be around hire. So you look at a town, the area, how many people, local people were hired, how many businesses were used from the lumber company to restaurants, caterers, the

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thrift store, all that stuff that just starts turning the money through, that will be the economic indicator. And that's not there now, so that will be a really big boom for the local communities. This is also for rural areas and urban areas, like Milwaukee to any of the small towns all over the state of Wisconsin. That's why we had so many Republicans and so bipartisan support.

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throughout the whole state because people can see that this is an economic developer in an area. then it's crude, it's people, the business is there and just the money churn and the tax, how much tax you pay on everything you buy in the area too, that's gonna be a boom like any other creative, the creative economy, I strongly believe it and it's never talked to about but.

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know, film is the number one export from the United States and, you know, businesses don't come to a community unless there's some kind of creative and art scene too. The people who have to work as engineers, they want to go out and listen to music. They want to go to the film festivals, all that kind of stuff. So all this stuff is just an economic boom.

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Cameron Woodward (24:24.77)

That's awesome. And then one last question for you both, which is, what are you most excited about or what do you think Wisconsin needs most in this next phase to make the new incentive successful?

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Nathan Deming (24:38.402)

Good question. I mean, I hope it just causes people...

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Maybe people who are higher up in the industry. mean, I actually didn't know that anecdote Suzanne gave at the beginning of this that like a lot of her coworkers were from the Midwest, but I've found that in Hollywood too. Like there's a lot of hardworking people that.

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come out of the state and go to LA and it's like, there's a possibility now that they could move back and contribute something here, which is really interesting. just in the past few years, I think we've shown that our state does have an identity that's to use these terms like marketable, brandable. mean,

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Netflix just did two series about serial killers that are from Wisconsin, but they didn't film either. They take place in Wisconsin. They didn't film either of them in Wisconsin, right? And there's a sci-fi show called Revival that is set in Wausau, Wisconsin, because the creators from Wausau, they filmed it in Canada, you know, and then they just did some drone shots. So like, I'm very excited about the possibility of Wisconsin filmmakers getting to tell their story. And

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just through this whole exciting process of fighting and winning this battle, because honestly, we did not expect to win this fight at all. it was at the very last minute, it was off the table, and then it just suddenly went back in, and then we were like, my gosh. But like, through this fight, I got to meet so many filmmakers around the state, including Native American filmmakers, like people that I'm just really excited that if...

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Nathan Deming (26:07.022)

You know, I'm excited about the big productions coming too. I'm also, as the independent filmmaker, really excited about what happens when there's a thriving film culture here. And I mean, this past few years, hundreds of Beavers, Green and Gold, two big independent movies that came out of the state that made real money and kind of made cultural waves as well. So I'm just excited for what's gonna come.

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Suzanne Jurva (26:26.895)

Yeah, I'm excited too for the same reasons Nathan said. I have five films in production now and one of them is like too far gone in another state that we can't pull it back because we didn't know when it was going to pass. Going back to what Nathan said about the film production and how we got them, it was like such a great movie story arc where it's like we're trying, trying, trying, trying. Okay, first hurdle, it's not going to happen. And then at the end, you

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Nathan Deming (26:49.921)

Yeah.

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Suzanne Jurva (26:56.112)

last minute it's dead out of the water and then we find out that the governor signed it at 1.37 in the morning of July 4th. So it's like what? Which is great for a storyteller. It's a great story to tell how we got our film tax incentives. But I'm excited that there's gonna be more collaboration here. I'm excited that people like Ethan Hawke who wants to film here, he loves Milwaukee.

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Nathan Deming (27:03.188)

Yeah, right, right.

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Suzanne Jurva (27:24.217)

and he has a partner here who's based at September Club who's here in Milwaukee. Now he can base his next films there. I have two films with September Club right now. I have a film with a German production company. That's how everything grows is by this kind of collaboration. And I'm happy for my friends to come back home who I didn't know I would ever live here, but I'm here. So there's so many great people.

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Suzanne Jurva (27:53.88)

You know, I love LA still, I love LA production, but it's a different type of production and feeling here, and it's just as good as LA also.

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Cameron Woodward (28:06.158)

That's awesome. Well, on behalf of the Wrapbook team, we are really excited to support productions in Wisconsin as well. And it's obvious that the incentive will be really helpful for filmmakers and even more awesome that there's really great advocates and filmmakers and a community with people like you in it. So thank you so much for joining me on On Production. One last time before we conclude, Suzanne, will you just give a rundown of

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the incentive broadly for listeners that maybe missed it earlier in the episode as to what the criteria is to qualify and where people should really be going to learn more about this incentive for the state.

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Suzanne Jurva (28:49.295)

Sure, so right now people can go to Act 15 or to ActionWisconsin.com and wait, it's not dot org, it? Sorry, I haven't looked it up in a while now. It does work, sorry. Yeah, we're keeping up with all the FAQs. We'll be coming there about the bill because like I said, it's still kind of being rumbled around between the departments there and stuff like that.

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Nathan Deming (29:00.095)

.org, I think it's .org. We won the fight and then we forgot the website.

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Suzanne Jurva (29:18.468)

But what is in the bill currently is that it's the creation of film tax incentives at 30 % for qualified spend for Wisconsin crew, locations, equipment, vendors, businesses to qualify that 30%, which is a very good, that's a very good rate, I feel. And then the $5 million cap for this year.

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and that will hopefully be increased. We're following the Minnesota model where they started at five million and then increased, increased, increased, and there up to, ooh, what is it, 20 million now as a cap, I think? 25 million, yeah. So we're following that model. And a creation of a film office that will be up and running next year so people will be able to find crew, locations, all the things you find at a

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Suzanne Jurva (30:15.439)

at a film office and let's see what else is there. It'll be filing an accredited budget with them, approval, it's like everything else in the state and then at the end you will receive a tax credit to be able to finance your next film if you pay taxes here or sell off to somebody.

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Cameron Woodward (30:40.256)

Excellent. Well, very, very good. Thank you so much, both of you, Suzanne and Nathan. It's such a pleasure to have you on on production and congratulations on all of the hard work to get this legislation passed. We're excited to see the stories that come out of Wisconsin from here on out.

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Nathan Deming (30:54.904)

Thanks so much for having us.

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Suzanne Jurva (30:56.29)

Yeah, thank you so much. This was great. It's fun to talk about incentives too. So if anybody has any questions, you can reach out to Action Wisconsin and drop a little question there in the meantime, but we're all here to answer questions too.